CenturyLink celebrates a profitable Q3

While its fellow tier 2 ILEC brother Frontier struggled in the third quarter (Windstream won't report its results until Monday), the relatively newly-minted CenturyLink actually showed a strong uptick in profit for the quarter.

CenturyLink, which was created when CenturyTel completed its merger with the former EMBARQ, reported that company profits shot up to $280.8 million from $84.7 million, or 83 cents per share, in Q3 2008. What's more, CenturyLink's operating revenue climbed to $1.87 billion from $650.1 million in 2008. This figure includes $1.3 in revenue from the former EMBARQ. 

Along with seeing an uptick in its profits, CenturyLink also fared well in expanding its broadband penetration and line loss improvements. On the broadband side, CenturyLink added more than 43,500 new high-speed Internet customers, a 52 percent increase over the company's pro forma second quarter growth of 28,600 customers. Access line erosion was also down with the achievement of 9 and 16 percent improvement in the third quarter compared to pro forma second quarter 2009 and pro forma Q3 2008 line losses, respectively.

In addition to seeing a profitable quarter, CenturyLink also does not appear to be facing the integration issues that have plagued FairPoint, for example, in their acquisition of Verizon's former New England lines. CenturyLink said it continues to make progress in integrating EMBARQ's operations into its own fold. What's more, in October CenturyLink completed financial and human resource system conversions, initial billing and customer care system conversion in addition to launching the CenturyLink brand in its 33-state territory.

For more:
- see the official CenturyLink release here [1]
- Reuters has this article [2]

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[4]Windstream could be examining a bid for FairPoint [5]
[4]Three states approve Frontier's acquisition of Verizon's rural [6] [4]